A Slice of Murder (6 page)

“Don’t let her get to you,” Maddy said. “She’s mean, but she’s harmless.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I won’t be able to get an unbiased jury in twelve counties once she’s done with me.”

Maddy said, “This will never go to trial. You have to believe that.”

“Sorry I don’t have your faith in our local law enforcement, and it’s important to remember that if we don’t find out what really happened to Richard Olsen, a trial is exactly where I’m heading. But even if it doesn’t make it that far, the longer this hangs over my head, the more easily folks in town are going to start believing I actually did it.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Maddy said.

“I’m counting on it.”

We traced my route of the night before, and I felt my hands start to shake as they grasped the wheel of their own accord. The image of Richard lying there with a knife in his chest was one I doubted I’d ever be able to wipe completely away from my memory, certainly not this soon. I was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of revisiting the scene of the murder when suddenly and almost without warning, I had no other choice.

We were there.

I parked in front of the house and studied it in daylight. Richard had kept it up nicely, from the careful paint job to the well-tended lawn. I’d let mine go to weeds, hoping snow would cover the worst offenders at some point, but Richard’s looked like it was ready to green up at the slightest encouragement.

Maddy looked over at me, then asked, “Are you ready to do this?”

“No.”

“We don’t have to, you know,” she said softly.

“We both know that’s not true, though, don’t we? Let’s go. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and Sheila won’t be home.”

We walked up the steps, and as we neared the door, I saw that it was ajar.

“What should we do?” Maddy asked.

Instead of answering her, I called out, “Sheila, it’s us. Are you there? Is everything all right?”

I saw that the carpet where Richard had lain was gone, and someone had cleaned up the blood that had spilled around it. Nothing else looked out of place.

“Hello?” I called out again.

There was no answer, so I took a step forward.

“What are you doing?” Maddy asked me. “We can’t just walk in.”

“We can be bold, or we can be gone. I don’t see any other options,” I said. “She could be in trouble. That’s a two-car garage, so there’s room for her car as well as her brother’s inside. We don’t know she’s not in there, helpless or in trouble.”

Taking a deep breath, I walked in. To my sister’s credit, she didn’t even hesitate.

As she stared down at the naked hardwood floor, Maddy asked, “Is this where it happened?”

“As far as I can tell. There wasn’t a whole lot of light coming in, so I didn’t get a clear look, but that seems to be right.”

I knew I’d come in looking for clues, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the freshly scrubbed floor. The image of Richard Olsen’s body kept superimposing itself on the floor in flashes, no matter how much I willed it to disappear.

I don’t know how long I stood staring at the spot, but Maddy gave me all the time I needed.

I was about to suggest that we start looking further into the house when a car drove up and stopped in the street.

It appeared that someone besides Joanna was keeping tabs on us.

Chief Hurley got out of his squad car, and from the expression on his face, I prepared myself for the worst.

“E
leanor, have you completely lost your mind? Do you want me to lock you up?” Chief Hurley asked as he approached us.

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” I said, though I knew we hadn’t had permission to cross the Olsen threshold. I just hoped he didn’t know that.

“Breaking and entering is still a crime, in case you hadn’t heard,” he said.

“The door was open,” Maddy explained.

“Then that makes it unlawful trespass,” Kevin said. “I can’t believe you’d be this foolish.”

“Then you really don’t know me all that well at all,” I said. “I’ve done things a lot more foolish than this.”

Maddy said, “It’s true. Would you like a list?”

“Spare me your vaudeville act. Do I need to handcuff you both, or will you come with me quietly?”

I was about to say something I knew I’d regret when Sheila came out of the back of the house, obviously startled to see us all standing there.

“What’s going on?” she asked, carefully avoiding our glares.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. I caught these two trespassing. I’m handling it.”

Sheila said, “How can they be trespassing if I invited them here, Sheriff?”

“It’s Chief,” Kevin explained automatically. “Are you trying to tell me you knew they were here? Don’t lie; I saw the look on your face when you turned the corner.”

“I admit I was startled to see you all standing there.” She turned to me and said, “I wasn’t expecting you two until tonight.”

“We decided to close early today,” I said. “Thanks for having us over.”

“Why exactly did you invite them here?” Kevin asked, a perfectly legitimate question that Sheila clearly didn’t have an answer for. “You were ready to kill Eleanor this morning.”

“That’s before I spoke with her,” Sheila replied. “I’ve come to believe that you’re focusing on the wrong suspect.”

Kevin looked ready to explode, but he buried his temper as quickly as it had fought its way to the surface. “You’re mistaken,” he finally said.

“That’s your opinion, not mine,” Sheila snapped. “Now if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got work to do.”

“What work is that?” the chief asked.

“These ladies have kindly offered to help me go through the house. There’s a great deal of work to be done, and I can’t do it all by myself.”

“This is still a crime scene,” Kevin snapped.

“But you released it to me this morning, remember? Unless you’re afraid there was something you missed the first time you went through it.”

He had the choice of admitting that he’d been sloppy, or giving us what we wanted. I was certain neither option was all that attractive to him.

“Fine, we’ll play it that way for now,” he said, then left.

I turned back to Sheila once I was certain he was gone and said, “I don’t know whether to hug you or scream. Why did you disappear like that?”

“I didn’t disappear. I simply changed my mind about dessert.”

I wasn’t buying that, but there was really no way I could call her a liar, not after she’d stepped in and saved us.

“That’s good, because it’s all gone,” Maddy said. “Now, where should we get started?”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Sheila said. “The police chief seemed pretty upset with you being here.”

“You don’t want to find out who really killed your brother? Is that what you’re saying?”

My sister had that edge in her voice that I’d heard a million times before. She was going to bully Sheila into helping us, and I wasn’t going to stand for that. “Madeline, back off. She’s already helped us by keeping us out of jail.”

“Whose side are you on?” my sister asked me.

“Sometimes I wonder myself.” I turned to Sheila and said, “If you want us to leave, we’ll go. Just say the word.”

Sheila seemed to think about it, then said, “No, I meant what I told the chief. I do need help here, if you don’t mind.”

“On the condition that we’re allowed to search for clues while we work,” Maddy said.

Maddy glared at me, daring me to overrule her, but I wasn’t about to. I wanted to dig for information myself.

“I suppose that would be all right,” Sheila said.

“Good, then that’s settled. Let’s get to work,” I said before she could change her mind.

I looked around the house and realized that Richard Olsen had two sides to him. The living room was neat, clean, and well organized. It wasn’t until I looked inside the two bedrooms that I realized that deep down, he was a slob. Clothes were thrown everywhere; newspapers were bound with twine and stacked in the corners of the rooms, while boxes full of who-knew-what littered the rest of the floor space.

“How did he live like this?” I asked, forgetting for a second that we were there by his sister’s goodwill. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”

“You haven’t been thinking anything I didn’t say to him a thousand times while he was alive,” Sheila said. “He’s been like this since he was a boy.” She turned to Maddy and added, “Why do you think I was so eager to let you help me?”

“I’m beginning to understand,” my sister said.

They both sounded so defeated, I knew I had to brighten things up a little. “Come on, ladies, we can do this. Sheila, you start carrying bundles of newspapers outside so we can recycle them. Maddy, find some empty boxes and start gathering up clothes. Are you going to keep them, Sheila, or are they being donated?”

“I have no use for them,” Sheila said.

“Good, I know the Salvation Army will be able to use them.”

“If we’re doing all that, what are you going to be doing?” Maddy asked.

“I’m going to tackle the paperwork, if that’s all right.”

Sheila nodded. “That’s fine with me. If you find a will, let me know. I have no idea what Richard wanted done with his things. Oh, and if there’s a bank account, or an insurance policy, anything at all like that, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”

“Consider it done,” I said.

As Sheila started carrying the first bundle outside, Maddy whispered, “How in the world did you get her to agree to that? You’ve got her schlepping old newspapers while you’re going through his personal things.”

“I’m not quite sure, but let’s just take advantage of it before she changes her mind,” I said.

Maddy laughed. “You’re kidding, right? We could turn on rap music and start chanting along and she wouldn’t say a word. Look around. Would you complain if you were getting free labor from us?”

“No, I guess you’ve got a point, but I still don’t want to push it.”

“Go on, then. I’ve got clothes to sort.”

I heard the front door open, so I said quickly, “Search the pockets as you go. You might find something.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun, riffling through a dead man’s jackets and pants.”

“Do you want to switch?” I asked.

I was talking to Maddy, but Sheila must have thought I was speaking to her. “No, thanks. Paperwork makes my head hurt. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate you sorting through that mess. It’s much nicer just dealing with these newspapers.”

“I just thought I should offer,” I said as I shook my head in my sister’s direction.

She rolled her eyes, then started sorting clothes. I moved into the other bedroom, where it was apparent Richard had set up a home office. Four file cabinets surrounded the desk, a structure that was nothing more than cinder blocks and an old door. He hadn’t even removed the knob, but I didn’t discover that until I got down to that level. There was a copier tucked into the corner, too.

This was going to take forever.

I ducked into the kitchen and found a new box of trash bags in the cupboard. I was probably going to need every last one of them. I returned to the bedroom, and as I began sorting through the stacks of papers on the desk, I found receipts for everything from Richard’s brand new Honda Accord to a donut he’d had for breakfast the week before. There were receipts from three days ago, when he hadn’t had a clue he was about to die, and receipts from all the way back to when he’d first moved into the house. How was I going to make any sense of any of it, especially when I was surrounded by all the clutter? It was enough to make my head throb. I decided the only way to look through it all was at home, where I had room to spread out and form some kind of logical system. I stopped being so careful studying each receipt, shoving piles of them into bags. Once I had the desktop and file drawers empty, I wasn’t certain I’d be able to fit it all into my car, even with the spacious back.

One of the file folders flipped open as I crammed it into a bag, and I was surprised to see some kind of key taped there. I pulled it out and saw that it was from Southern Wheat Bank and Trust, a business that had been in our part of North Carolina for over a hundred years. It was a miracle it hadn’t been gobbled up by some corporate takeover, but it was probably too small for any of the big boys to care much about.

“I found something,” I said to the others.

Maddy came rushing in, with Sheila right behind her.

“What is it?” my sister asked breathlessly.

“A safety-deposit box key from Southern Wheat,” I said. “Sheila, the papers you need are probably in there.”

“That would be wonderful,” Sheila said. “But how do we go about getting into it?”

“Let’s go by the bank and see if they’ll let you open it,” Maddy said.

“Not without a lot of red tape,” I replied. Then I remembered retrieving our will from ours after Joe died. “Sheila, is there any chance you were listed on the account, too?”

“I don’t know. I signed a few things for Richard over the years, but I can’t remember what they were.”

I nodded. “Then at least it’s worth a shot. Why don’t I drive us?”

“Someone needs to stay here and keep working,” Sheila said as she looked at all the bags I’d generated. “Have you gone through everything?”

“No, I need to have space to sort things out, so I thought I’d take them home with me. I was going to ask you first, of course.”

“I don’t know,” Sheila said, the doubt heavy in her voice. “I hate the thought of anything leaving the house until I have a clearer idea of where things stand.”

Maddy spoke up. “Why don’t I go to the bank with you, and Eleanor can stay here and keep sorting through those papers?”

I was about to protest when Sheila said, “That would be perfect. Thank you both so much. Just let me grab my purse.”

As she ducked into the living room, I said, “Thanks for nothing. I wanted to go to the bank myself. After all, I found the key.”

“Does it really matter which one of us goes with her, as long as one of us does? I didn’t mean to throw you under the train tracks like that, but I was afraid she was getting ready to say she was going by herself, and then we might never know what was inside. Forgive me?”

“I guess so,” I said as I looked at the bags of papers I’d so cavalierly thrown together. If they’d been separated by any type of system before, it was long gone. I was afraid I’d made myself even more work than I’d meant to.

Sheila was at the door again. “Are you coming, Maddy? If you’d rather stay here and work, I could always go by myself. I’ve got my broken-down old Mercedes parked in the garage.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “She’d love to go with you. Besides, you don’t know anybody in town, so having Maddy with you might expedite things at the bank.”

I knew full well they wouldn’t, but I was counting on Sheila not knowing that personal contacts went only so far in our banking institutions.

After they were gone, I focused on the bags in front of me. I quickly developed a triage system to deal with the masses of paperwork. One area was for discards, while I put possibly useful information in one of the boxes I’d scavenged away from Maddy. Once the system was in place, I had a neat stack of papers in one box, and half a dozen trash bags on the front porch that were ready for the shredder or the landfill.

I looked over what I’d found and wondered when Maddy and Sheila would return. There were five bank envelopes, each containing two brand-new one-hundred-dollar bills. I’d nearly thrown them away, since they’d been buried in banded stacks of fifty envelopes from the same bank, the others all empty. After finding the first two bills by accident, I’d slowed my search until I was certain I’d found every bill in the stacks. It told me one thing besides the fact that Richard liked to have cash around the house: he liked to hide things in plain sight, something I was going to have to keep in mind as I kept searching. The bills weren’t the most unusual of my finds, though. I’d also found six separate deposit slips for the same bank where Sheila and my sister now were—each for nine thousand nine hundred ninety dollars, dated the first of each month for the past six months.

Maybe I could catch Maddy while they were still there. I used my cell phone to call her. “Hey, it’s me.”

“Hi. I should have stayed there with you. This is taking forever.”

“Then Sheila’s name wasn’t on the safety-deposit box account?”

Maddy snapped, “It was there, all right. The problem is, the only employee with the proper key to let us in is on her lunch break, and as of right now, she’s seventeen minutes late.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “While you’re there, have them do a search of Richard’s other bank accounts to see if Sheila’s name is listed on them as well. I’m willing to bet if she was listed on the box, she’ll be in the other accounts, too.”

“Fine, it’ll give us something to do while we’re waiting. That’s a good idea. What did you find, a checkbook or something?”

“Or something,” I said. I told her about the deposit slips, and she whistled loudly over the phone. “Where did he get that kind of money? That’s a lot of cash to keep in a checking account.”

“All of them are just under ten grand,” I said. “That means the bank doesn’t need to report them to the Feds. Richard was hiding something.”

“Maybe we should look a little harder as we search,” Maddy said.

“I found a thousand dollars in cash already,” I said. “Let me talk to Sheila and tell her. She’s entitled to a little good news after the past couple of days.”

“She’s right here,” Maddy said.

As Sheila answered, I said, “I’ve found a thousand dollars in cash here.”